“Cole, stop,” I say in a hoarse croak. He doesn’t even pause. “Cole, stop!” I call louder.
This, he hears.
When he turns his head to look at me, it’s as though he’s still seeing Ryan. For just a second. Maybe two. He looks murderous. Confused, almost, that he’s seeing me. And then his expression softens. It softens into something that makes me want to cry and curl up in his arms and never move.
But then he looks away. Back to Ryan, who is unconscious beneath him. He climbs off him, kicking him once in the ribs for good measure, before he reaches into his pocket for his phone. “I’m calling the police.”
And so he does.
As he speaks to the 911 operator, I stand to shaky legs and make my way to Emmy’s room. I knock on the door. “Emmy? Unlock the door, sweetpea. I want to come in.”
I wait, listening for rustling or crying, afraid of what I might find.
I hear nothing.
I knock again, a little harder this time.
“Emmy, open up, baby, it’s Momma.”
I wait. I listen. Nothing.
I try the knob. It won’t turn. It’s definitely locked.
“Emmy, you’re scaring me. Please open the door. You’re safe now. I promise. Cole is here.”
My heart picks up the pace again, my soul coming into the clutches of some nebulous fear. I knock again. Try the knob again.
“Emmy, please. Open the door.”
I sense Cole’s presence before his arm shoots out past me to try the knob.
“It’s locked,” I explain unnecessarily. “She locked it when I told her to stay in her room and not come out until I came to get her.”
“Emmy, can you open the door please?” he asks, pecking with his knuckles.
No response. I press my ear to the door. No sound. Not one.
“Ohgod ohgod ohgod,” I mutter, racing into the bathroom for a hairpin that I can use to pick the lock. When I return and bend to push it into the tumbler, Cole moves me back with one hand and kicks the door in, startling a shriek out of me.
The first thing I feel when the door flies open is cold air. That’s when I see her open window. And my whole world comes crumbling down around me.
TWENTY-NINE
Cole
I SEE IT register on her expressive face–that fear that everything you love, everything you live for is hanging in the balance. In a balance you can’t see, in scales you can’t find.
Panic clouds her vision. It’s there in the way her eyes dart around the room in confusion and circle back to the open window, around the room again and then back to the open window.
“Emmy!” she cries, flitting through the space as though she’s missed something. “Emmmmy!” she screams, nearing the window.
A hollow pit opens up in my stomach as I watch her, this woman that I love. She’s trying to understand one of life’s most terrifying possibilities. But also trying to deny it.
I want to say something, but I know that even if there was something comforting to say, it would fall on deaf ears. The only thing that will help Eden right now is to find her daughter.
So that’s what I’ll do.
“Stay here. I’ll find her,” I tell her calmly. My voice, my expression, my presence is solid. Steady. But my insides are clamped down, the fear in the air an all too familiar black cloud.
“I’m coming with you,” she says, not even meeting my eyes. The devil himself is nipping at her heels. I know that feeling well. And I know there’s no use in arguing.
I step out of the hallway and reach for Eden’s coat. I hand it to her as she scrambles for her boots. Before we head out the door, I grab the blanket that’s folded along the top of the couch. Emmy will need it when we find her.
And we will find her.
I promise myself that much.
We strike out, leaving an unconscious asshole in the middle of Eden’s living room floor amidst the wreckage of busted furniture and broken things. He’s the least of my worries right now. Hopefully the Sheriff will get there and keep an eye on him until we get back. This is more important.
This is more important than anything.
Eden can’t lose Emmy. I know what that does to a person and I can’t let that happen to her. Besides that, I can’t lose Emmy either. She needs me. And I need her. We all need each other.
We walk along the road from house to house, both of us calling to Emmy. The wind is whipping off the ocean, howling through the streets, carrying our voices out to sea before they can get very far. I hear the panic rising in Eden’s tone. The way she says Emmy’s name is becoming more and more shrill, more and more desperate.
My heart is thudding heavily in my chest and I try to imagine where a little girl might go when a monster from her past pops up on her front porch.
Icy fingers of dread grip me when I think of her love of the beach, when I think of how the empty stretch of dark sand might seem like a safe place to hide to a scared child. A place no one would look for her. I push the thought away. I refuse to consider it as a possibility, even as my feet turn in that direction.
We call her name. Still, there is no answer. No small forms hiding in the shadows or running toward us in the pools of yellow light shed from the street lamps.
“Let’s check the house I’ve been working on,” I tell her, steering her toward the sidewalk. “Maybe she hid there.” I pray that she did, but some strong sense of foreboding tells me she didn’t. Or that if she came here and found it empty, she moved on.